Wednesday, August 27, 2008

finally running (again)

It seems like I say this all too often throughout the year, but I think I’m finally getting back into running again.

I went for a run yesterday evening in the shaded canyon creek trail – a great place to go in the summer when it’s still 90 degrees in the late afternoon. The first half-mile of the route is exposed to the sun, but then you enter the shade of the canyon and it stays that way for pretty much as far as you want to run/walk/bike/go.

Hilary started teaching her kickboxing class again yesterday for the first time after her a.c.l. – about six months ago. The trailhead is on the way to her class so I hitched a ride with her. This felt a little like cheating, but it was also nice to not have to ride all the way up there and then run. Maybe we’ll continue with this Tuesday night carpool scheme.

Anyway, my running miles are way down this year. Everything was going pretty well up through my training for the Mount Wilson Trail Race. Then I took a little break and did some traveling and had/have the whole cherry bomb nagging issue and never really caught back onto a good running schedule. Yesterday I ran eight miles – the farthest I’ve gone since Mount Wilson – two and a half months ago. Running is hard again. I need to get back on track so it will be easy and more fun. Then I’ll be able to enjoy the scenery a little more when I’m out there instead of just trying to make it through the ordeal.

It’s also a little bit hard to train for nothing. There’s a trail race in December out on the coast that looks nice – Lasse Viren 20K. Maybe I’ll sign up for it to give me some motivation. Why it’s named after Viren I don’t know, although he did run in it once.

Hopefully the build up toward a competition and cooling temperatures for the rest of the year will help me get out there. I think I’ve missed my chance at 1000 miles this year, but it would be nice if I could at least recover to around 700 – I would be satisfied with that.